DESCRIPTION: I, Patricia M. Fredenburg, am an optometrist licensed to practice in Virginia and Texas. After 11 years of practicing optometry, primarily in an ophthalmology practice, I decided to return to school to pursue a career in an academic environment. While I enjoy clinical instruction, I hope to do research into basic mechanisms in binocular vision, since teaching at the graduate school level is my goal, and topics in this area are particularly difficult for many professional students to understand. My research career development plan includes didactic course work in computer science, perception, and statistics, as well as hands-on participation in experiments in binocular vision in the lab of Ron Harwerth, O.D., Ph.D, at the University of Houston College of Optometry. Normal binocular vision allows the development of ocular sensory and motor interactions that enable the individual to interpret his/her spatial environment. Depth-distance information obtained from the combination of binocular and monocular cues abundantly present in the environment is essential for the efficient performance of many everyday activities and occupations, yet 34% of the population who have abnormal binocular vision have an impaired ability to use the available information. The long-term objectives of the proposed research is to gain a better understanding of the functional alterations that occur in individuals with abnormal binocular vision. The knowledge gained from the research can help determine whether early surgical intervention in strabismus is essential to maximize the potential for the development of normal binocular vision and whether other, non-surgical treatments might enhance the therapeutic outcome. The proposed research, therefore, will use psychophysical techniques to further qualify and quantify the sensory and motor responses of subjects with stereodeficiencies and/or motor anomalies, and the responses compared to those of subjects with normal binocular vision, in order to determine how their sensory and oculomotor systems respond differently to various aspects of the visual stimulus.